


Kiwi's Life in the Library

by Roshwen



Category: The Librarians (TV 2014)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Found Family, Gen, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, Kid Fic, Kiwi is an awesome kid and you ain't rid of her yet, Multi, One Guardian, One Jenkins and one Flynn, One Shot Collection, One mom, Sometimes a Family can be two dads, What more could any kid ask for?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-10
Updated: 2018-09-06
Packaged: 2019-06-25 13:50:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15642036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Roshwen/pseuds/Roshwen
Summary: Now that Andi is no longer a threat, and Kiwi has finally come to live with her dad (and her new mom and her new other dad) in the Library, what will she do? In what kinds of trouble will she get? Will there be more magical creatures, more adventures and more dangers? You bet!





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I feel this should be obvious by now, but for those of you who have not caught on: this is the sequel to [Kiwi](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13183203/chapters/30154260). You don't _have_ to read that first if you don't want to, but some things might be a bit confusing if you don't.

‘Uncle Jake?’

Jake looked up from his research to see Emmie, standing in the Annex doorway and biting her lip, big brown eyes looking troubled. Not the kind of troubled they usually got, when there was a mild panic about broken coffee cups or Library books that had mysteriously gotten orange juice all over them, no idea how that happened Uncle Jake honest; this time, Emmie’s hands were shoved deep into the pockets of her jeans and Jake could see they were balled to fists, to stop herself from wringing them together. Whatever was going on, it must be serious.

‘Yes, darlin’?’ he asked, abandoning his notes about 16th century Dutch architecture. ‘What’s up?’

Emmie looked back into the hallway, then glanced around the Annex as if searching for something. ‘Uhm. You know about horses too, right?’

Jake grinned. ‘I do. Cowboy’s not just a nickname, you know. What do you wanna know?’

Instead of grinning back, Emmie’s face scrunched in on itself a little, and Jake frowned. ‘Hey. Junior, what’s wrong?’

‘Can you… can you come with me, please?’ Emmie asked, after a long pause and a heavy gulp of air that did not cause all Jake’s alarm bells to go off at all. ‘Please? I think… It’s Peggy. She’s...Something’s wrong with Peggy.’

\---

Peggy was not a happy Pegasus. Even from the far end of the pasture, Jake could see her standing, head held low miserably, her wings drooping and the muscles in her back standing taut in a strange, tense line. She didn’t even look up when Emmie opened the gate, whereas her friend Suzie immediately raised her head, whinnied and started trotting towards them, snorting as if to say ‘thank god you got here’.

‘Alright,’ Jake said slowly, taking in the sight. ‘Junior, can you take Suzie back to the stable for a moment? I’ll look after Peggy.’

Emmie nodded, softly calling out to Suzie and clipping on the halter to lead her away. She didn’t want to come at first, looking back at her friend every two steps and whinnying in worry, but eventually Emmie managed to get her out of the pasture, disappearing into the stable.

‘Alright,’ Jake said again, making his way over to the coal black pegasus that was still standing, lonesome like a statue in the tall grass. ‘Now, let me take a look at you.’

\---

It took a long time. But just when Emmie had deciced to stop nervously pacing up and down the stable and start going back into the pasture, she heard the clopping of hooves, but it sounded weird. It didn’t have the rhythm it should be, and when she bolted outside to see what was going on, she met with the sight of Jake carefully, slowly leading a very cripple Peggy out of the pasture.

Shock and fear spiking up her spine, Emmie felt herself grow rigid for a moment before she ran out. ‘What happened?’ she cried, frantically trying to wrestle the lead rope from Jake, who blocked her way. ‘Uncle Jake, what’s wrong with her?’

‘Easy, easy,’ Jake said, now holding Peggy with one hand and Emmie’s shoulder with the other. ‘Easy, Junior, she’s gonna be okay. But there’s a couple things we need, alright? Can you listen to me and help me out here?’

Not taking her eyes of Peggy, who had now lifted one of her front hooves from the ground in obvious pain, Emmie nodded. ‘What do we do?’

\---

What they did first, was put Peggy in a sandy paddock with no grass, no straw, no hay and no feed. Only mud, because as soon as they put here in there, Jake told Emmy to go fetch the hose and turn one corner of the sand into a mud bath.

‘This’ll help her take some of the heat out of her hoof until the vet gets here,’ he told Emmie. ‘Now, can I ask you something?’

Emmie nodded, and Jake turned back to look at the pasture. ‘How often do you put them out in there?’

‘They didn’t used to go that often,’ Emmie admitted, turning around too and following Jake’s gaze. ‘But Jenkins said I should let them loose in there whenever I could, and I didn’t want them to be inside all day because… because they can _fly_ and they shouldn’t be _inside_ and so I… I have been taking them out every day? I think. For almost three weeks now. But Jenkins said I could!’

Jake sighed, dragging a hand over his face and turning back to Peggy. Who had by now discovered the mud and had planted both front hooves in it. If a horse could sigh in heavenly bliss, she would have.

‘Idiot,’ Jake muttered, shaking his head. ‘Honestly. Man’s been around horses for over a thousand years, you’d think he’d know better.’

‘Did I do something wrong?’ Emmie asked in a tiny voice.

‘It’s not your fault, darlin’,’ Jake said gently. ‘But I think there’s some things about horses Jenkins should’ve told you before lettin’ you take care of ‘em on your own.’

\---

Because, as Jake explained to a tearful Emmie, yes, horses were supposed to be outside and eat grass. But if you put a horse that is used to nothing but hay and horse feed outside on fresh, luscious, sugar-sweet grass all of a sudden, they will get very, very sick.

‘It’s called laminitis,’ Jake said. By now, the vet had come and gone, Peggy was already looking a little happier (though still ankle deep in her mud bath, from where she had obviously no intention of moving). ‘It’s when all the sugar in the grass causes the horse’s hoof to grow all wrong, and it hurts them like a bitch. And it can be pretty bad, but I think you’ve caught it in time. We just gotta keep an eye on her and she can’t eat grass for a while, but she should be fine.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Emmie whispered to Peggy, who softly snorted back. ‘I didn’t know that.’

‘It’s okay,’ Jake translated, smiling at the pegasus, who looked back at him with a far more intelligent gleam in its eye than he was used to seeing in a horse. ‘I don’t think she blames you.’

He stood up, stepping away from the paddock fence. ‘Now. I think we should go back to the Library, because if you still wanna take care of these girls, I think there’s got to be some books around that you might wanna read first.’

\---

‘Stone?’

‘Hmm?’

‘Why is there a book called ‘The complete horse care manual’ on my daughter’s night stand?’

Jake grinned, an angelic grin that did not mollify Ezekiel in the slightest. ‘Hey. There’s worse ways to keep her out of trouble.’

Ezekiel rolled his eyes. ‘Fine. But if she starts asking for a pony, you’re the one telling her no.’

\---

(Surprisingly, it took Emmie a whole six months to broach the subject of having a non-magical pony for herself. Which, as Jake pointed out to a _very_ exasperated Ezekiel, might not even be a bad idea:

‘Just think about it, Jones. If she’s on a horse and it spooks, do you want it to be a normal horse or one that can _fly_?’

With a heavy groan, Ezekiel slumped forward over his desk in defeat. Archibald the appaloosa arrived at the Library three weeks later.)


	2. Unauthorized Adventures - 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ezekiel has made a device that can call up a Back Door from anywhere, and decides to give one of them to Emmie. You know. For safety.
> 
> What could possibly go wrong?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fair warning: this is not finished yet and it's going a little more slowly than I anticipated. But I wanted to get it out anyway, so I hope you enjoy! (And also: suggestions for more epic locations Emmie would visit are more than welcome!)

In hindsight, after he had managed to survive his three separate heart attacks and after he had lectured at Kiwi for at least an hour and yelled at Jenkins for at least two, Ezekiel had to admit that it might have been at least a little bit his fault.

Okay, maybe it was completely his fault. And yes, _Stone_ , maybe he should have thought this whole thing through a little before going with it, but in his defense, it seemed like a good idea at the time. No, scratch that: it was still a good idea. It’s just that there had been some unforeseen circumstances that yes, _Cassandra_ , he should have foreseen, but still. The idea, as Ezekiel tried to explain over and over again until _someone_ would stop giggling and start listening, the _idea_ was sound.

Because now that she was living in Portland, Kiwi did not have her nanny-cum-bodyguard Poppins with her anymore. And of course Ezekiel, Jake and Cassandra were trying to be responsible parents and not let her wander off into danger but let’s be honest: their lives were chaotic at best, downright dangerous at worst and nothing if not unpredictable. Sooner or later, there would come a point where Kiwi would have to fend for herself for an hour or so while the grownups were saving the world. And who knows what could happen to an unsupervised ten-year-old in an hour or so, especially if that ten-year-old happened to be on the radar of certain supernatural creatures.

Not to mention that she was now going to an American school. And Ezekiel had seen enough news stories about American schools to make _absolutely sure_ that his kid had a way of getting out of there _fast_ if she ever needed to _._

That at least got an approving nod from Eve Baird and sobered Jake and Cassandra up for a moment. But not for long, because then Jake looked over to the bright blue spiral notebook now lying on Ezekiel’s desk and burst out laughing again.

\---

_The steps up the tower of the cathedral were narrow and uneven and there were a lot of them. Emmie was in pretty good shape for a ten year old but even so she was already panting and sweating while she wasn’t even halfway up yet._

_But that was okay. It was all part of the adventure. The adventure her dad was probably going to murder her for, but that would be worth it too._

_When she finally got to the top of the tower, however, she discovered to her secret disappointment that there were no actual singing gargoyles living on the Notre Dame. Of course her dad had told her there probably weren’t, but he had also promised he would ask Jenkins because you never knew. Emmie did not know if he’d actually done that, but as she made her way up the final steps and through a stone door to the walkway around the tower, the only gargoyles she saw were sitting on the edge of the balcony and staring out into the distance with a stony expression, unmoving and definitely not about to burst into song._

_The view was amazing, though. Up here, there was a brisk, cold wind but otherwise the sky overhead was cloudless and clear so Emmie could see all the way across the dizzying sprawl of Paris. With bated breath and a grin so wide it hurt, she started to wander along the walkway, pausing every ten feet to take everything in: the Eiffel Tower, a sleek iron needle in the midst of the elegant buildings surrounding it, the dark water of the Seine where boats the size of ants were zipping to and fro and, off in the distance, the gleaming white dome of the Sacré Coeur. Around her, people chattered and ooh-ed and aah-ed in every language imaginable. But no one seemed to pay any mind to the unattended ten-year-old drinking in the sight of the city beneath her and patting every gargoyle she came across, just in case._

_Until the timer on her phone started to buzz and Emmie reluctantly started to make her way back downstairs where, in a darkened corner of the magnificent cathedral, the door to a confessional was taking on a familiar blue glow._

\---

It all started like this.

Having a magical door that could lock on to any door anywhere in the world was great. It made traveling out a lot easier, and it made getting out of scrapes and back into the Annex with everybody still intact a breeze. There was just one tiny downside to it, as Ezekiel discovered during their third mission while on the run from a very annoyed Romanian farmer who did _not_ appreciate four Americans roaming across his land in search of a strigoi gone rogue:

‘Jenkins, we need a door, now!’

‘Of course, Mr. Jones, happy to oblige. Where are you at the moment?’

‘We’re in a bloody field in Romania, mate! Bit busy to look up the exact location right now, just spin the globe and get us a bloody door!’

‘Ah.’

_‘What do you mean ‘ah’?’_

They got back into the Annex safely, in the end. But not before Eve had taken Cassandra down in a flying tackle from behind to prevent her from being shot in the back with a gun that probably predated Ceausescu, Jake tried to reason with the farmer in what sounded to Ezekiel like garbled throat noises and nearly got clubbed in the head for his trouble and Ezekiel did _not_ trip over an inconveniently placed molehill and landed flat on his face in the dirt because that didn’t happen and his ankle was totally fine.

So. After they had finally made it back by way of a broken down shed at the far end of the field. And after he had wiped most of the dirt and grime from his face, Ezekiel turned to Jenkins, who was watching him with badly concealed amusement.

‘I have to say, Mr. Jones. I think you are improving. I don’t think I can remember the last time four people successfully managed to outrun one elderly agrarian. Well done.’

Ezekiel didn’t bite; he was a little too concentrated on surreptitiously keeping his weight off of his stupidly throbbing left ankle. ‘Thanks mate. But if you don’t mind, I think there’s some room for improvement for all of us. Starting with that bloody globe over there.’

\---

It took a while. A little over two months until he could even start thinking about rigging up the first prototype, and almost three months after that before he finally got close to getting it right. Six months of researching technomagic (to Eve and Jenkins’ suspicion and Jake and Cassandra’s amused bafflement), tinkering and occasionally setting his work room on fire, but in the end, Ezekiel was looking at four Tamagotchi sized devices lying on his work bench. One black, one blue, one gunmetal grey and one bright pink, with a large button in the middle and a keyring on one end to keep certain cowboys from losing them.

‘These are AP’s,’ he told Eve, who started inspecting the thing the moment he handed it to her, turning it over and around in her hands to see what it was it did. ‘Short for Annexing Pigeons.’

‘Of course,’ Eve groaned. ‘And they do what, exactly?’

Ezekiel grinned and moved towards the Back Door. ‘Here, let me show you. Stone, can you punch in some coordinates? Don’t tell me where it is, surprise me. Now, I go through that door and you unplug it. Then all I have to do is press this button,’ he held up the device and waggled it for all his team to see, ‘and the Door will know where I am and lock on to the nearest, well, door. Home in no time. No more calling Jenkins at all hours of the night…’

‘Much appreciated, Mr. Jones.’

‘… or looking up coordinates in the middle of a Russian frozen wasteland. You can all thank me and tell me I’m awesome now.’

‘And if it don’t work?’ Jake asked, eyeing both his AP and Ezekiel with equal misgiving.

‘If it doesn’t work, cowboy,’ Ezekiel replied with a grin, ‘then I’ll personally come and drag your ass back here. Promise.’

\---

_A wall of hot air greeted Emmie as she stepped out on to the sand and she blinked, squinting in the sunlight after the dimness of the Library. This one had been a bit tricky, since the pyramids of Giza themselves had no door to them. Fortunately, loads of tourists meant loads of tourist services so in the end, Emmie had locked the Back Door on to a public bathroom stall in the hopes that it would work._

_It did. And when her vision cleared, she turned around and let out an audible gasp at the sight in front of her._

_Because she had seen pictures, of course. In fact, the pictures were one of the reasons she had come here, the other being numerous visits to the British Museum with Poppins and the impromptu history lessons she had gotten from Uncle Jake when he found her reading the Horrible Histories book about ancient Egypt._

_But pictures did not do justice to the massive,_ massive _four sided sandstone monuments rising from the sand dunes and pointing towards the sky. Up on the Notre Dame, Emmie had felt like a giant; now, with the desert sand already creeping into her shoes, the sun beating down on her and the air uncomfortably dry and hot in her throat, she looked up in awe at buildings that were older than anything she’d ever seen, older even than most things in the Library were, and she felt very, very small._

_Slowly, unwilling to take her eyes off the pyramids, she reached into her pocket to get out her phone and set the timer. She could not stay too long. But as long as she was here, she was going to make the most of it._

\---

It worked. Given the nature of Librarianism, the Pigeons had to be replaced a little more often than Ezekiel liked, but they worked well enough. They got Cassandra safely out of Peru after she discovered that the Mayans liked setting up mathemagical puzzles but did _not_ like people trying to solve them; they saved Eve from a polar werebear in a remote settlement near the Arctic Circle that refused to be gunned down; Jake came rolling into the Annex one night looking deathly pale and clutching a deep and nasty gash in his side after a ‘low-level’ solo mission to Japan that had turned out a little more hairy than expected; and no one really knew where Ezekiel went, but he seemed to be in and out of the Annex whenever he pleased.

Which was why, three years, one snake monster and the accidental exposition of a ten-year-old secret later:

‘Kiwi, can you come with me for a second?’

\---

_The Berlin zoo was HUGE. Emmie had been to the London Zoo a couple of times and had always found more than enough to see there for one day. However, that was nothing compared to the ginormous map she was now staring at, trying to find the one exhibit she was actually here for. A quick midnight Google search had told her that there were over 1300 species here and more than 20.000 individual animals, but Emmie was only interested in one species, and two individuals._

_‘Hallo,’ a voice next to her said, making her jump._ _‘Kann ich dir helfen? Hast du dich verlaufen?’_

_Emmie turned around to see the friendly face and dark green overall of a zookeeper looking down at her. At least, he was friendly now. Emmie did not want to get to the point where he would start asking difficult questions such as ‘where are your parents’ and ‘how did you get in here’._

_She pointed at the map to one of the few German words she recognized. ‘Panda?’ she asked in a hopeful voice._

_The zookeeper smiled. ‘Aber natürlich. Immer geradeaus und wenn du das Affenhaus siehst…’ He stopped, noticing the mild panic dawning on Emmie’s face. ‘Aber du sprichst kein Deutsch? Okay, if you want to see the Pandas, go straight through and turn right when you are past the Monkey House.’_

_‘Thank you!’ Emmie squeaked and bolted away before the zookeeper could start to wonder what a non-German child was doing in his zoo on her own._

_(The pandas were worth it, though)._

\---

It was late at night, but Emmie was still awake. Her dad had sent her off to bed hours ago and although she had obeyed and brushed her teeth and washed her face and changed into her pajamas and everything, she had better things to do than to actually go to sleep.

Instead, she was sitting at her desk, wrapped in a blanket because Uncle Jake’s apartment was old and a little drafty. A blue spiral notebook lay on one side, opened on a page scribbled so full it was nearly intelligible. Her new Pigeon sat against the wall, gleaming green in the soft light of her robot desk lamp.

For almost ten minutes Emmie sat still, staring by turns at the notebook and the AP, her face contorted in a deeply focused frown. The only sound in the room came from the soft tapping of her fingers against the desk, a sign that she was so lost in thought it would need at least a medium sized dragon bursting out of the wardrobe to get her attention back.

The tapping stopped. The frown disappeared. And Emmie hitched the blanket a little higher over her shoulders, carefully tore the overflowing page out of the notebook, selected her best pen out of the pen cup at the edge of the desk and started writing.

\---

‘Just in case of emergency,’ Emmie’s dad had said. ‘And _only_ in case of emergency, you get that? This is not a toy, alright? It’s a very expensive and very rare magical item and you need to be very careful when you’re using it, but. If you’re ever in trouble, _real_ trouble and you need to get out of there, you can. Just press the button and you’ll be back at the Annex safe and sound.’

And Emmie had put on her best serious face and she had nodded and taken the small, green device her dad was holding up. It had a big dark blue button and the casing was decorated with a kind of leafy pattern (after making the first dozen or so, Ezekiel may have gotten bored of the standard colors. His own Pigeon now had a gold casing that looked suspiciously real) and it fit perfectly into the palm of Emmie’s hand.

‘Only in case of emergency,’ her dad repeated sternly. Emmie nodded again, and her dad’s dark expression broke into a smile. ‘Now, you wanna go downstairs and try it out?’

\---

_The panda visit had been a close call. Emmie had been so enraptured that she had completely lost track of time and even the buzzing of her phone could not pull her away from the two gentle black and white giants gnawing on their bamboo stalks._

_When she had finally remembered to go back, she had been almost an hour later than she should have been. It was only by sheer luck that there was no one in the Annex when she returned through the door or that her dad had not woken up yet. After stumbling out of her wardrobe, she took a flying leap into her bed and lay very still, her heart pounding in her ears._

_It wasn’t even five minutes later before her bedroom door inched open and the voice of Cassandra asked if she was awake yet._

_So. Since that had been way too close, her following visit had to be short but sweet. That shouldn’t be a problem._

\---

However. As reasonable and well thought out her dad’s idea might have been, there was one thing he had not accounted for. There was one thing he _couldn’t_ have accounted for, because he didn’t know and what he didn’t know, was that Emmie had a List.

Not a list.

A List.

A List that had started when she was six years old and she just started to learn how to write. The first item on it was very short. It was just three letters and two of those were the same, so that was easy.

It said ‘MoM’.

It wasn’t written in a notebook at first; just on a piece of paper Emmie had nicked out of Poppins’ printer tray and instead of a pen, she had used one of her coloring pencils. The blue one, because her mom’s favorite color had been blue. After painstakingly drawing out the three letters, Emmie carefully folded the paper and tucked it under her pillow.

Because she was six years old and a little scared and a little alone without her mom, without her dad and with only a grumpy nanny for company. But her dad had promised that he would come back and when he came back, they would go somewhere fun together. So Emmie figured she had better start thinking of a place they could visit and then, when her dad was here, he would take her wherever she wanted to go. And she had to make sure to remember it too, so she better write it down.

Two days later and much to Ezekiel’s relief, ‘MoM’ was joined by ‘zOO’.

And that was how the List got started. It moved on from the piece of grubby paper under Emmie’s pillow after a year or so, when she moved to Year 1 and she started to figure out how to write longer words like ‘museum’. She pestered Poppins, pleading and promising to be on her best behavior for a week until he finally gave in and took her to a Paperchase. There she picked out a shiny, bright blue notebook with a golden band around it to keep it closed. She also picked out a heavy black ballpoint pen which looked and felt really grownup when she held it and which wrote far better than her coloring pencils.

That night, she took her new purchases to her room, fished out the piece of paper from under her pillow and carefully started to transcribe the List for the first time.


	3. Unauthorized adventures - 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Emmie's adventures continue, with a couple of hiccups but her dad still does not suspect a thing. Not yet anyway...
> 
> (Also! Here be dragons!)

_‘I can’t stay long,’ Emmie whispered in the darkness to the small boulder that shone ghostly white against the grass. ‘But I just wanted to give you this.’_

_The boulder did not reply. Which was good, because the last thing Emmie needed was for her mother’s headstone to come to life in the middle of the night. She was not exactly a scaredy cat (after all, living in a magic Library was not for jumpy people who got nervous around weird noises in the dark), but being in a pitch black cemetery in the dead of night would put anyone on edge. And while there was a blanket of deathly quiet lying over everything, there were enough nightly critter noises audible at the fringes of it to make Emmie involuntarily turn her head more than once._

_‘I wanted to give you this,’ she repeated, pitching her voice low so as not to disturb the silence too much. She dug into her pocket and fished out something small and oddly shaped, a little rough to the touch._

_‘It’s something I found in a second hand store,’ she said, placing the small object in front of the boulder. ‘With Cassandra. She got it for me and I thought you might like it because you always said you kept kissing frogs but they never turned into princes and you were kind of bummed about that.’_

_Emmie paused. Now that her eyes were accustomed to the darkness, she could vaguely make out the shape of her present: a stone figurine of a frog, sitting on a ball and wearing a small crown. In the light, it would have been a mottled green and the crown would have been gold. Now, it was merely black on shinier black._

_After taking in the picture for a moment, Emmie sat back and smiled. ‘I hope you like it,’ she said softly before she got up, brushed the dirt and grass off of her pants and made her way back to the supply shed at the edge of the cemetery. Trying not to walk a little faster every time something rustled in the grass behind her._

_\---_

Of course, living in a magic Library was great. It was amazing. It was everything Emmie ever wanted and then some. There was always something new to see, new rooms to explore, new books to read and new magical items to _not touch Junior, do you hear me?_. And now that she had officially been promoted to Jenkins’ ~~sidekick~~ ~~right hand man~~ ~~little helper~~ _apprentice,_ with a badge and all, there was always enough for her to do even if her parents were out saving the world.

(And no, she had not _asked_ for a badge. It had just been there one morning, lying on Jenkins’ desk. It was small and rectangular and made of some kind of copper that shone like fire when it caught the light. Emmie had grabbed it, pinned it to her jacket and had not taken off since, while her dad rolled his eyes and shook his head at the Annex ceiling before he burst out laughing.)

She did chores. She mucked out the Pegasus stables and scrubbed the dragon pens. She fed Nessie Jr. and took samples of the lake water back to Jenkins so he could check the quality. She reshelved books, fetched books, returned books. She polished magical mirrors. She dusted off time machines, being _very_ careful not to accidentally press any buttons. With help from Eve, she even reorganized the entire non-magical inventory in the Annex so that from now on, every paperclip and every yellow marker was accounted for.

And if she was _really_ good, then Jenkins would let her sit in while he was experimenting in his lab. Emmie would help him by handing him herbs and beakers and vials that were filled with mysterious liquids and then sit very still, watching Jenkins work and trying to read the yellowing labels on all the dusty jars above her head.

But in all of this, there was still a magical door she passed by every day. A door that her parents and Guardian used to have the most amazing adventures in the outside world, leaving Emmie behind to sit back and watch the blue glow fade away.

And now that she had essentially been handed a Get Back Home Free card, it would have taken a far stronger person than Emmie to resist the temptation of sneaking out every once in a while.

\---

It started small and innocently enough with an empty jar of peanut butter.

As the Caretaker, it was Jenkins who usually kept the Annex kitchen stocked. But as an immortal who did not need food, it was also often Jenkins who forgot that other people might need to eat from time to time. That was how one day Emmie trotted into the kitchen, positively starving after spending the entire morning trying to find a new box for Schrödinger’s cat, and found that there was bread, there was jelly but there was no peanut butter.

If there had been peanut butter but no jelly, she would have been fine. But this was just unacceptable. Everybody else was out, trying to turn an IKEA that had somehow become a magical maze (even more so than usual) back to normal. And Jenkins was somewhere deep in the recesses of the Library, hunting down books about magical mazes.

And Emmie was still hungry.

She knew where the store was. It was a ten minute walk from the Annex. But that would mean she would be gone for at least twenty minutes and, more importantly, it would be at least twenty minutes before she had something to eat. Her stomach gave a vicious grumble at the thought and Emmie agreed wholeheartedly.

Almost without conscious thought, her fingers closed around the Pigeon in her pocket. It was time for something more drastic.

\---

_‘What was it like living in New York?’ Emmie asked. She was sitting with Cassandra on the dark wooden floor in the Library, hidden between two book shelves. They were supposed to be reshelving books in the Ancient Japan wing, but that was boring and Emmie had never been to any big famous city outside of London._

_Cassandra paused for a moment and wrinkled her nose. ‘Stinky,’ she said. ‘Very very stinky. And busy and loud and there’s always people trying to steal your money. But you know, there’s also theaters and Central Park is really nice in the summer and there’s a zoo and I didn’t have any money but I always went rich people watching in Manhattan, which was a lot of fun. And of course,’ Cassandra’s face broke into a wide grin, ‘the Natural History Museum is pretty epic.’_

_Emmie listened, nodding along thoughtfully. ‘So, a bit like London then?’ she asked and Cassandra laughed. ‘Yeah, I suppose so. A bit like London.’_

_\---_

_New York was… a bit of a letdown, if Emmie was honest. Cassandra had warned her that it would be stinky and busy and loud, but she had not said_ how _busy or loud or stinky the streets would be. Emmie remembered how she and Poppins had once been caught at Oxford Street during rush hour and that had been bad enough, but this was a hundred times worse. After being jostled and bumped back and forth by thoughtless tourists all across Times Square, Emmie had half a mind just to turn around and press the button on her Pigeon already because this was not fun at all._

_Until her hand found the directions towards her real destination in her pocket. Times Square would have been a nice bonus, but that was not wat she was here for._

_And if the city itself was bit of a bummer, Cassandra had not been lying about the Natural History Museum being epic. Like a true scientist, Emmie had done her research about the different exhibits beforehand so she would not waste too much time but the truth was: even if she had to spend the full two hours in one room, she would not have regretted it one second._

_Prehistoric lions and sabre tooth tigers and mammoths, oh my! Keeping one hand on her phone, Emmie wandered through the museum with eyes wide with amazement: from the Biodiversity hall to the Ocean room, where she gasped in awe at the blue whale hanging from the ceiling. From the Ocean room to the Hayden Theater, where she resolved to come back next time with Cassandra, so she could explain_ everything about space _to Emmie. From the Hayden Theater to the Dino room, where she gasped again but this time at the massive T-Rex looming over her, jaws open in a menacing grin._

_And when at last the timer buzzed again, Emmie ran all the way back down to the entrance where she stopped to climb up to the bench with the bronze statue of Theodore Roosevelt and whisper ‘Thank you.’_

\---

One quick trip to the store turned into two. Three. Four. And not just for Emmie herself. Every time someone in the Annex needed something, they would find it on their desk within a few hours, to the point where even Uncle Jake started joking about Ray acquiring an army of helpful brownies.

Exclusive brand chocolate for Cassandra. Tea from an even more exclusive brand for Ezekiel and Jenkins. Pens and pencils and notebooks for Jake, who had a habit of losing or destroying his own. Advil and espresso beans for Eve, although those beans were expensive and ate up more of Emmie’s allowance than she had anticipated. On the other hand, she had already seen Eve before her morning coffee once and she did not want to repeat that experience.

All of this was easy enough. It just required a little planning, very little time and no real effort.

And Emmie’s last name being Jones, it only took two months before she started looking for something more interesting to do.

\---

However, it turned out that Adventure planning was way more difficult than store trip planning. It wasn’t the figuring out where to go, because Emmie had her List for that. It wasn’t even figuring out when to go, because as her store trips had proven, there were plenty of occasions where no one would miss her if she snuck out for an hour or so. And if she wanted to stay out longer, well. She had always been an early riser and her new family was notorious for sleeping in the morning after one of their Library missions. So timing wise that should work out just fine.

Timing and location were not the problem.

The problem lay in the details.

Such as when Emmie snuck out one morning to see a little bit of the Great Wall of China and discovered, in a very practical way, that time zones were a thing that existed.

Or when she found out that she could not pay for real Belgian chocolate in Brussels with American dollars. The lady was very nice about it (although her English was a little funny), but it was still a bummer.

Or when she went to visit the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona because Uncle Jake had told her it looked like a space ship from the inside and found out that while people from Belgium had a weird accent, in Spain they did not speak English _at all._ Once again, the lady she asked for directions was very nice and seemed very apologetic when she discovered that this was not going to work. But that niceness quickly turned into a worried frown and a looking around for Emmie’s parents, so Emmie held up her phone, yelled ‘GPS’ and darted off into a random street before the lady could say anything else.

She found the Sagrada Familia in the end. And it did look like a space ship. But Emmie could nog help but getting a feeling that she might need to prepare her future adventures a little more carefully.

\---

_Now this, Emmie thought a little giddily as she crept into the dark green forest, was a_ real _adventure. Here she was, all alone out in the woods with no one to tell her where to go and she was looking for a treasure._

_Okay, maybe she wasn’t_ totally _alone, given that there was a little village not a mile away where she could easily find help if she fell and broke her ankle. And maybe it wasn’t exactly a treasure and she certainly wouldn’t get to keep it, but still. It was the thought that counted._

_The mossy ground was soft and spongy under her feet as Emmie walked on, following the narrow trail deeper into the undergrowth. Twigs snapped and leaves rustled around her as unseen critters scurried away. It wasn’t dusk, not yet, but it was nearing it and the low rays of sun slanted through the trees overhead, illuminating patches of leaves here and coating the rest of the forest in a shadowy haze._

_Emmie had never been more excited in her life. For all her city upbringing, she loved being outdoors (to her dad’s dismay and Uncle Jake’s delight) and when Jenkins had brought her here a couple of months ago, she had immediately resolved to go back whenever she had the chance._

_This walk through the forest wasn’t just about being outdoors, however. If Emmie wanted to go outdoors, she could easily do that at home. She didn’t need to set up a door to the deep south of Slovakia to go take a walk in the woods._

_No. Emmie had set up a door to the deep south of Slovakia to see the dragons._

_She found them at the end of the trail, at a clearing from which all the grass had been scorched away years ago. There was nothing left but black sand and a lingering smell of sulphur._

_And a pile of glittering scales, gold and red and blue and green and silver, catching the last rays of sunlight as two, three, five, seven, over half a dozen dragons woke up and sniffed the air. Long snouts were lifted up and opened into jaw-cracking yawns, rending the air even more noxious than before. Stumpy claws stretched out and dug deep into the dirt as one by one, the dragons extracted themselves from their sleeping pile, snorting and sniffling and with a faint metallic sound as their scaly skin slid against each other._

_Mesmerized, Emmie watched as one dragon, a red and golden one the size of a Saint Bernard, sat up, scratched itself vigorously behind its ear and then, after one more belch that stank of rotten eggs, folded out his wings and took off with a thunderous roar that shook the trees._

_Gone was the peace of the clearing. Now, the air was alive with heavy belches and resounding dragon roars until Emmie had to cover her ears. In her hiding hollow between the trees she sat, clutching her ears and grinning her widest grin, her heart pounding in her chest with joy at the sight of the dragons taking flight. Some of them took off in a straight line, zipping as high as they could before they disappeared into the sky. Others took their time, freewheeling through the air in the most complicated figures Emmie had ever seen before steadily climbing higher and higher. And some of them were just lazy, the bigger ones with heavy claws and heavier wings who needed to use the entire clearing as a runway before they managed to get off the ground. One of them, an enormous blue dragon with wings the size of a small car, nearly hurtled itself into a tree, screeching to a halt just in time and turning around in a huff to try again, this time facing the other way._

_At last, all dragons were gone. The clearing lay empty and once again quiet, and Emmie breathed out for the first time in what felt like hours._

_That was when she noticed the_ other _figure standing between the trees a couple of feet away. She couldn’t make him out too clearly. It was human-shaped, but too tall, taller even than Jenkins and something wasn’t right the further down she looked._

_‘HYou must be ze Library’s child,’ a gruff voice said, not unkindly. The figure moved closer and now Emmie could see its lower torso and its legs. There were four of them. Sleek, dark brown and definitely not human._

_‘Tell you vat,’ the centaur continued with a grin when Emmie squeaked a ‘yes’. ‘HYou don’t tell hyour family hyou saw me. And I whon’t tell zem I saw hyou either.’_

_Well. That was one promise Emmie did not have to think twice about._


End file.
